Of Guinea Pigs and The Days Between the Years

The days between the years are the days between Christmas and New Year’s Day, sometimes extended to my birthday on the second of January. For many years my vocation has allowed me to allot unused holiday time to these days.

In The Magician’s Nephew, C.S. Lewis writes of the Wood between the Worlds,

“It’s not the sort of place where things happen. The trees go on growing, that’s all.”

These days are my “Wood between the Worlds”.

Often the kids have been home, sometimes from boarding school, to enrich them. This year they left on Boxing Day and almost simultaneously Red Deer became wrapped in fog and exquisite hoarfrost and quietness. Sunday morning we were still getting over the Christmas flu and found that the trunk light, from a trunk ajar, had drained the car battery. We happily cozied up.

I have lesiurely restored much to rights, set up another jigsaw puzzle, shopped minimally for a half-price calender and a handful of Christmasy stuff for next year, nibbled on Christmas left-overs and baking, slept in, stayed up late, answered emails, played on this blog, and renewed my study of Prayer Book Hebrew. Yesterday we took in a matinee- the visually spectacular, story line satisfying, spiritually dangerous, escape film “Avatar.”

In The Magician’s Nephew, Polly and Digory travel between worlds and find themselves in the woods.

“What do we do now?” said Polly. “Take the guinea-pig and go home.”

“There’s no hurry,” said Digory with a huge yawn.”

“I think there is, said Polly. “This place is too quiet. It’s so- so dreamy. You’re almost asleep. If we once give in to it we shall just lie down and drowse forever and ever.”

“It’s very nice here,” said Digory.

“Yes, it is,” said Polly. “But we’ve got to go back.” She stood up and began to go cautiously towards the guinea-pig. But then she changed her mind.

“We might as well leave the guinea pig,” she said. “It’s perfectly happy here, and your uncle will only do something horrid to it if we take it home.”